No Love Lost
by Belief Among Unrest
Summary: They may be married, but are they husband and wife, or predator and prey? And who's really the prey, in the end...


So, I'm alive.

No one really reads these apparently, seeing as there is one fic for this manga, and it's not in English...

Anyway, maybe I'll inspire. Pfffftttt. But yeah, this author is my favorite of all manga authors EVER. So therefore, much love for Reimei no Arcana. Read onward, despite there being no other point than sexual tension.

* * *

"You're my wife," Caesar told her easily. "And you refuse me?"

Nakaba backed up, grimacing. "In a marriage of convenience," she spat, "there is no love lost if I do or do not sleep with you."

He stepped toward her, one hand reaching up to brush bright red hair behind her ear. She shuddered. "I never meant to imply that you should sleep with me. I only meant so suggest that we become more…familiar?" he grinned at her.

"What purpose would that hold?" she demanded, backing up. He followed, not releasing her hair from where his fingers were caught in it.

"We're married," he stressed. "Shouldn't we act like it?"

She realized she was moving toward the wall, and stopped, not wanting to find herself with nowhere to go. "We don't need to, though."

He smirked. "Isn't it more proper that way?" He took another step closer.

Her lower lip moved, making words that wouldn't come.

"Nakaba," he murmured, not kindly, now pulling her toward him instead of stepping closer. His other hand grabbed hold of her sash, not undoing it but rather just idly playing with it, the smirk playing over his lips. "Does being my wife disgust you?"

She stuttered, "You're the prince of Belquat. Your country _murdered_ my mother. Marrying into that country does nothing less than disgust me."

"Ah," he said, not offended by her words, "you see, it was not _me_ who killed her, and I was not the one who gave the order. What do politics have to do with this?"

Her jaw worked. "Everything." She moved one hand to remove the one behind her head, but he pulled her against him, resting his cheek against hers to whisper in her ear:

"Nakaba. Why should it matter where it does not concern us? Here: let me help you forget." He ran his hand down her back slowly, his fingers light and warm against her spine. "Let me," his lips brushed her ear, "occupy those thoughts."

She froze, still feeling where his fingers left the light impression of a trail. "We'd still," she gasped as bit at her ear gently, "be enemies in the end."

"Would we?" he asked, slowly pulling her sash off. It made no difference toward her state of decency, but she felt like she was being more openly exposed, and snatched it back, holding it between them like a wall.

"Yes," she said, though perhaps a bit shakily.

He smoothly pulled it through her fingers, the material making a soft noise as she let it go without a fight. "Really," he said quietly.

He wrapped the sash around her, pulling her waist to meet his hips. "You don't sound certain," he whispered hotly, his mouth having found its way to her jaw.

Her hands moved to his chest to push him away, but he caught one of them, dropping the sash but not creating any distance between them, and, controlling her fingers, ran them over the skin of his neck, encouraging. She made a noise caught between surprise and confusion, but didn't snatch her hand back. He smirked against her jaw, his lips parting in a single, light kiss.

Nakaba inhaled sharply. "We would."

Her hand in his moved farther down, and his fingers managed to undo the top few buttons on his shirt. Her fingers were made to run over his chest, and, with the thought that she found she liked what she found on the body of the man she was forced into a marriage with, the man who represented the enemy country, she pulled her hand back. "We definitely would."

"We're not now," he said, his mouth on her neck, his hands imploring at her waist, their touch saying closer, always closer. "We are husband and wife."

"We are predator and prey," she corrected. "There is no love. There can only be…" she couldn't find the word.

"Passion?" he asked, and bit softly down on her neck. She gasped, her hands moving to his shoulders to push him away, but he bit her again and she found she had not the strength to force him away. "Lust?" One hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head back, and he licked her, soft and warm and enticing. "Obsession?"

She didn't know what to do. She should be pushing him away, making him stop, but she was torn. Torn between what she believed she should be doing, and what she wanted. And she didn't want him to stop. "And danger," she managed to say around the feeling of his mouth on her throat.

"Danger?" Caesar laughed, his teeth and tongue doing magical things. "It's only war."

It's only war it's only war it's only war.

She pushed at him with all her might. He took a step back, his mouth freeing her neck at last, his hands falling from her waist. Her head cleared with the distance.

"It's only war?" she demanded, fire in her voice. "It's _only_ war? It's a catastrophe, that's what it is! It could mean the end of everything! Belquat will destroy whatever gets in its way. I refuse to play any part." She turned her back to him, crossing her arms, thinking he'd get the hint and leave. He didn't.

He stepped up behind her; she could almost feel him touching her even though he made no contact. "You do play a part," he told her, "a big part. You are the wife to the country's prince." She flinched against her will. "And though you may not like that, why can't you like me?"

Nakaba's face hardened. "This country made you who you are. I do not trust you."

He said nothing. His hand moved slowly to sweep the hair off of her neck, and he rested his head on her shoulder. She glared in front of her, not looking at him. "Maybe if you took the chance to get to know me, you'd see this country isn't as bad as you think."

"Isn't it?" she snapped. "You touched me, forced me to be touched by you—"

He laughed, cutting her off. "As I remember it, you didn't try to stop me at all. In fact, you were _reacting_—"

"I was not," she denied heatedly. "I would not."

"You did," he murmured, his hand touching her hip, the other reaching through her curtain of her hair to stroke the skin beneath the edge of her shirt. "And you liked it."

"Impossible," she said, turning her head away, trying to shake off his hand. He resisted; a single finger hooked in the band of her shirt, pulling the material over so her shoulder was mostly bare. His head moved, and his mouth hovered over her skin.

"Tell me," he said, his voice harder than before, "that you don't want me to touch you. Tell me that it disgusts you, and I won't. Tell me that you wish to never see me again, that my touch makes your skin crawl, and I'll never touch you again."

She opened her mouth, tried to form the words, but suddenly she couldn't say them. She didn't seem capable of saying them. "I…" she tried, but couldn't finish her sentence. "I…" her throat closed, and she looked away from him, ashamed.

She sensed, rather than saw, him smirk. "If you can't answer, I'll ask your body. If you tell me to stop, I'll not touch you again. If you react, well…"

She didn't look back at him, but she didn't tell him that she didn't want him to touch her. Instead she said, "I won't."

"I don't doubt it," he said, and she realized a second later that they both meant two entirely different things. Before she could protest, try to tell him that she hated his touch, he had scooped her up and set her on her back on the floor, one knee kneeling between her legs, his arms a cage around either side of her head. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Nakaba," he murmured, grinning a predatory kind of grin. "Let me show you how a man treats his wife." And his mouth was on her skin again.

Restless, unsatisfied, his lips smothered her neck, his fingers working the small buttons of her shirt so he could reach farther down, perilously close to something no one had ever seen, much less touched. He didn't reach it, however, and his lips and tongue continued to ravish her skin until it was red and aching, and they moved on.

Her hands were fists at her sides, her head turned to the side and her lips caught between her teeth so she wouldn't make a sound. His hands smoothly pulled her shirt out of her pants, just the tips of his fingers brushing over the hipbones that stuck out from the stress of living the life she did. He rucked the material up to her navel, his mouth letting her neck rest as it found the sensitive skin and gently kissed at it.

She made a small gasping noise, and covered her mouth. She felt him smirk before he gently bit at her hipbone. She jolted slightly, surprised. No one had ever touched her before, and certainly not like this. Who knew that one day the owner of the disgraced Akage would be found desirable by not just someone with the precious black hair of Belquat, but its prince at that.

She made a muffled noise into her hand when he licked her stomach, his lips doing wonderful things. She nearly sighed in relief when he raised his face back up to her, but also felt the loss of it. He didn't pull her shirt back down.

She saw he was slightly out of breath, and realized that against her will, so was she. She realized, too late, that he saw it too, and turned her face away.

Caesar's hand was abruptly on the side of her face, forcing her to look at him. He smirked, and said, "I'm going to ask you again. Tell the truth this time." Her eyes widened a bit. "Do you want me to leave?"

His body was hard and warm on her, his hands resting on either side of her head. She looked into his face, into the eyes that stared back like flames, at the lips that wanted to taste all of her they could, and said nothing. He frowned impatiently. "I'm losing my control, Nakaba. Tell me. Do you want me?"

She licked her dry lips, and his eyes followed the movement. Her hands found their courage and grabbed his shirt, pulling him closer. "You're the enemy," she whispered, eyes inches from his. His burned when she said that, as if he wanted to prove her wrong even more than he had. "These lips will lie. Ask my body."

He snatched her hands from his chest, forcing them off of him. She was surprised, thinking he was going to leave her after he almost got his answer, but he pinned them to the floor on either side of her head and attacked her mouth with his. He was vicious, all teeth and tongue and heat, and she sunk into the floor, as if it could protect her from the fire.

But she was kissing him back. When he licked her lip, went past it into her mouth, she pushed back, crushing into him the way he tried to crush her defenses. They were so close that the air was gone, and she jerked away to take a breath, but his hands were rough and pulled her back, smothering her and making her lightheaded.

Her fingers found their way to the bottom of his shirt, and she yanked it out of his pants, unbuttoning it so feverously that she nearly tore the buttons off. She ran her hands up his smooth stomach, hot and hard and wanting like every inch of him, every inch of her.

He pulled back, pushing her hands away, and she groaned in protest, opening her eyes to see his smug face. "You're a liar, Nakaba," Caesar said, pushing her back to the floor when she tried to kiss him again. She breathed heavily, her head swimming with the desire to touch him. He grinned, his hands now pulling at her back, forcing her to arch toward him. "I want to hear the truth from you."

"Caesar," she growled, glaring at him.

He leaned forward and bit her lower lip, dragging it between his teeth. She made a soft nose in the back of her throat. He whispered in her ear, "Tell me I'm not your enemy. Tell me you want me."

Her fingers threaded through his short hair. She leaned forward when he slowly began to pull away, teasing, and whispered back, "I want you."

He smiled, predatory, and quickly stood, pulling her with him. They collided, but he picked her up before she could stagger back, his arms circling her and pressing hard against her back and shoulder blades. She wrapped her legs around him so she wouldn't fall, and crushed her lips to his, all the suppressed emotions of the past few months surfacing.

His knees hit the side of the bed and they crashed onto it, so close and fast and needing that it swept her breath away, stole her mind. There was only the feeling, the desire, the man touching her, all of it.

He pulled back momentarily, but her mouth followed him, tasting his throat much like he tasted hers. His hands ran along her back, more urgent than before, and she realized, he thought she was the prey, but in reality, it was he who was being hunted.

She bit at his neck gently, and felt a change in his demeanor. He seemed…pleased. "Nakaba," he said, and she paused, lips touching nothing as she gazed at his eyes, dark. He grinned, his mouth feral. "You're a liar."

She looked up at him through her lashes, and chuckled. "Oh, Caesar. So are you."

* * *

Kind of lame, but I'm the coolest kid. Suck it, world.


End file.
